Spring and summer time are also awards time and it is exciting to watch the ballots of all major horror and SFF awards slowly trickling in. A couple of weeks ago the first Bram Stoker preliminary ballots and later the final lineup were announced and that lineup is, together with the Shirley Jackson lineup as well as recommendations from my network of fellow horror fans and friends, one of the major sources from which I make my tbr-list.
So naturally I wanted to take a closer look at the nominees and the books who got "so close": the books that will be competing for the titles of superior achievement in bold and below them the other shortlisted books that haven't made it into the top five. In my experience these titles are almost always just as good and if you ever wonder what to read next you can without hesitation grab one of them. There are quite a few titles I have already read and reviewed here, so I'll just link those to the corresponding Protean Depravity review because there's no sense in double reviewing them. As to the titles I haven't read yet, those are the ones most interesting to me - I've looked up their synopses and will comment on the ones I'm most excited about. Here's my two cents!
The 2021 Bram Stoker Awards® Preliminary Ballot Superior Achievement in a Novel
Jones, Stephen Graham – My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stred, Steve – Incarnate
Starling, Caitlin – The Death of Jane Lawrence
OK, let's see... This may look like I haven't yet read Stephen Graham Jones' groundbreaking small-town slasher but hold your horses, I did grab and devour My Heart Is A Chainsaw as soon as it was published. I just never reviewed it because there are a few points because of which I liked this one less than the previous Jones' I've read, mainly the lead character JD being a young teenager and thus, the book feeling like YA to me. So when I heard that this will be a series and there's a second book coming this summer, I thought I'd hold back until then to see if JD has grown any and then review the two books together. It's definitely worthy of being in the top five here, though!
I was surprised to see Steve Stred's name here with Incarnate, a haunted-house, satanic panic, coming of age story published by the indie house Black Void. If any, I really would have expected his other work Mastodon, a survival horror, to make the list just because it's a little more known and I honestly hadn't heard of Incarnate until the preliminary ballot was announced. Fun fact; here and there I have had casual small conversations with Stred through comments on goodreads and he seems like a genuinely cool person and I wish he had made it into the top5. Still, I was positively surprised to see his name in the shortlist and will definitely read Incarnate.
As to the other two titles in the shortlist that I haven't read;
The Death of Jennifer Lawrence has such a gorgeous, gothic cover! It revolves around a young bride who spends a night in the mysterious mansion her new husband has asked her never to set foot on and who, intrigued by its mysteries, sets off to solve them. I'll be straight and honest - I just finished Angela Carter's
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and I have the feeling I'm done with Gothic paranormal set in castles or mansions for a long time. But when I do feel like Gothic again, this is the one I'll turn to!
Children of Demeter by E.V. Knight - A 70's death cult and archeological research trips? Count me in! The only reason I haven't snatched this one yet is that it exceeds my budget a little and I'm waiting for a second-hand purchase!
Superior Achievement in a First Novel
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| My favorite in this category! |
Martinez, S. Alessandro – Helminth McQueen, LaTanya – When the Reckoning Comes Miles, Terry – RabbitsPiper, Hailey – Queen of Teeth Quigley, Lisa – The Forest
Willson, Nicole – TidepoolDesiree, Amanda – Smithy
Fox, VK – Indie Saint
Jones, C.B. – The Rules of the Road
The sheer amount of indie published books here is overwhelming! But if you think about it, it actually makes sense for a first novel category to be flooded with independent publishing houses. Unfortunately, with most of the nominated books I have the same old problem that I mentioned above; they're kind of pricy and my local library doesn't always have indie titles... Even if I won't have the chance to read all of them titles right away, I'll keep my eyes open for future opportunities.
Hellminth looks like a typical specimen of the trope "grieving person goes on holiday in nature and encounters eldritch horrors" and hell yeah I want!
I'm really happy that the Afro-American experience is settling more and more into horror literature and more often than not makes its way to award ceremonies. When the Reckoning Comes, which is about "a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation
wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the
blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind" sounds super intriguing and something I want to read immediately.
Lisa Quigley is an author I discovered last year through the riveting "Rewind or Die" novella Hell's Bells; it was such a fun, shocking but also heartwarming story that I want to read everything she has ever written and will ever write! In The Forest, the trees demand a sacrifice from a remote town and young mother Faye needs to run, run fast!
Urban legends and ghost radio stations are the game in The Rules of the Road and it has stellar reviews. I'm so curious!
These three books are on my imminent tbr-list so the PD reviews should come soon.
And last but not least: Smithy by Amanda Desiree. If there were such a thing as physically longing for a novel, that's how I feel about this book! The story is about a scientific experience to examine the capacity of primates to use sign language and the titular chimpanzee is brought into a mansion where family life is simulated to raise and educate Smithy. The experience ends in a catastrophe and fifty years later researchers try to understand what went wrong. Doesn't this sound like everything you ever wanted to read??? To me it does.
Superior Achievement in Long Fiction
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"Recitation of the First Feeding" is my favorite in this category!
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Castro, V. – Goddess of FilthKhaw, Cassandra – Nothing But Blackened Teeth LaRocca, Eric – Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke Piper, Hailey – “Recitation of the First Feeding” (Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy)Strand, Jeff – “Twentieth Anniversary Screening” (Slice and Dice) Asman, Brian – Man, Fuck This House
Deady, Tom – Of Men and Monsters
Jeffery, Ross – Only The Stains Remain
Marrs, Chris and O’Neill, Gene – “Entangled Soul” (Entangled Soul and Other Stories)
Tingle, Chuck – Straight
Novellas! Although I used to think that it is a form invented as a rip off to make you pay high prices for little books, I really got used to them and enjoy a well written short but sweet novella every now and then. Plus, they tend to have the most beautiful covers which justifies the purchase, even if the text disappoints.
The shortlist doesn't seem that appealing to me, except for Ross Jeffery's Only the Stains Remain which reads like extreme horror and should probably come with a few trigger-warnings about physical and sexual child abuse. But it is a revenge story and I totally dig those!
As to the actual nominees, I'm not going to lie, I totally root for "Recitation of the First Feeding" by Hailey Piper which was an insanely weird folk horror story that I immensely enjoyed reading.
Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection
Files, Gemma – In That Endlessness, Our End
Fracassi, Philip – Beneath a Pale Sky
Maberry, Jonathan – Empty Graves: Tales of the Living Dead
Tuttle, Lisa – The Dead Hours of Night
Wise, A.C. – The Ghost Sequences
Bailey, Michael – Psychotropic Dragon
Baxter, Alan – The Gulp
Landry, Jess – The Mother Wound
McCarthy, J.A.W. – Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories
Yap, Isabel – Never Have I Ever
Yep! This one here is my shame category. Haven't read any of them, but they go straight to my tbr, adding to its excruciating length...
Superior Achievement in an Anthology
Chambers, James – Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign
Datlow, Ellen – When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson
French, Aaron J. and Landry, Jess – There is No Death, There are No Dead
Guignard, Eric J. – Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World
Johnson, Eugene – Attack From the ’80s
Cluff, Michael and Becker, Willow – Humans are the Problem: A Monster’s Anthology
HOWL Society – Howls From Hell
Schlossberg, Josh – The Jewish Book of Horror
Showers, Brian J. – Uncertainties: Volume V
Thomas, Ben – Tales from Omnipark
OK, there are two things that strike me in this lineup:
Firstly, how is it possible that I could miss an anthology with a title as awesome as Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World?
Second and lastly - the HOWL society?? I love the idea that authors contributing to an anthology adopt a collective name and this is genius! Apparently it is one of the world's fastest growing communities too, hahaha!
Well, these are the books the epic Bram Stoker Awards are going to be chosen from this year! Have you decided which one(s) to read next? So many books, so little time, indeed...
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